But I’ll freely confess that no chart of mine can compare to this powerful image created by my Cato colleague, Andrew Coulson, which shows how spending and staffing for the government school monopoly have exploded while enrollment and performance have been stagnant.

As far as I’m concerned, no honest person can look at his chart and defend the current system.

But some folks may need some more evidence about the failure of government schools, so let’s look at stories from both ends of America.

We’ll start on the east coast. Writing for the Daily Caller, Eric Owens reports that bureaucrats in a New Jersey town are being handsomely rewarded for not educating students.

Only 19 students in the public school system in Paterson, N.J. who have taken the SAT scored high enough to be considered college ready,local Fox affiliate WWOR-TV reports. At the same time, 66 employees in the Paterson school district each soak taxpayers for salaries of at least $125,000 per year,the Paterson Press reports. …Paterson is no tiny town. It is, in fact, the third-largest city in New Jersey. The population is roughly 146,000 people. …The city boasts some 50 public schools altogether. There are over 24,000 total students in all grades.

But the folks in Paterson can be proud of their government schools. After all, they’re doing much better than Camden.

In December 2013, Camden’s then-new superintendent of public schools announced that only three — THREE! — students in the entire district who took the SAT during the 2011-12 academic year scored high enough to qualify as college-ready.

Last but not least, the story notes that the school district has concocted a clever strategy to avoid any more embarrassing stories.

Nope, nope, and nope. Remember, we’re dealing with government bureaucracy.

Back in Paterson, school officials say they have cleverly dealt with their nearly complete failure to prepare students for college entrance exams by no longer using the SAT to assess student achievement.

I actually hope this is a joke, though there’s no indication in the story to suggest the reporter is being satirical.

As Robby Soave reports in Reason, the LA school district first tried a failed scheme to give every student an iPad, which led to predictable fraud and misuse with no accompanying educational benefit. Now they want to double down on failure with a new proposal that gives various schools the option of which bit of high-tech gadgetry to mis-utilize.

Who could be against choice? That’s the argument Los Angeles school district administrators are now employing to push their latest round of expensive technology upgrades. Schools will be given the choice to receive Chromebooks instead of iPads—and some schools will get laptops, the most expensive option of all.…The idea is to eventually place such a device in the hands of every child in the district.

Needless to say, there’s no strategy for avoiding the mistakes that plagued the earlier scheme.

The problem administrators encountered when rolling out the iPad plan, however, was that kids kept losing or breaking the devices. What happens then? Do parents pay, or does the district? Do kids get a replacement? Teachers also struggled mightily to incorporate the technology into their lesson plans, and concerns about kids using iPads for unsanctioned purposes caused headaches. The initial iPad deal unravelled after allegations of an improper relationship between then District Superintendent John Deasy, Apple, and curriculum company Pearson.

The reporter is understandably skeptical about what will happen next.

I have little reason to believe that the individual schools will be more responsible stewards of the taxpayer’s money than the district was. Indeed, 21 schools decided to go with an evenmore expensive option: laptops. Steve Lopez of theLA Timesargued persuasivelyin October that the iPad fiasco was a costly diversion from the district’s real problems. Schools can’t even find the money for math textbooks, but administrators want to force unneeded technology on them and impose computerized tests. The district should prioritize basic instruction before deciding to purchase thousands of fancy gadgets.

11 Responses

I’m not convinced the Cato chart addresses whether there’s a need for tax hikes or not. In my home state of WA, our largest problem is decades worth of underfunded infrastructure, a gazillion buildings in dire need of repair or replacement. That’s part of the cost of education, but it remains regardless of whether enrollment and scores go up, down or stay the same. The school employees aren’t construction workers, and new buildings aren’t free.

Two aspects to genuine school choice need to be raised. Accreditation is the great driver of cultural poison/pursuing John Dewey’s vision in education. All choice HAS to reign in their current authority or the poison goes with the student.

Secondly, as an attorney who understands both contractual language and where the dangers are in educational policies and instructional practices, I could write a solid academically-oriented charter. Many though have unappreciated language that locks in a non-academic focus. Instead, the emphasis is on changing the student’s values, attitudes, and beliefs and real world skills.

I used to think that was just the charters I had encountered but there is federally funded research from 1988 laying out a plan to use charters to lock parents and taxpayers into that Deweyan/Change the Child template that many parents had rebelled against in the past.

Be careful so that genuine choice becomes available for all students, not nominal choice that exacerbates the problems.

I pay thousands of dollars in property taxes each year… the majority of that money goes to the local school system… I was in Wal-Mart… and I asked the pretty young red-head cashier to add an hour to my calling card… she asked me how many minutes were in an hour…. I was told by another young woman that one of her fellow employs at Mc Donald’s thought a senior discount was for seniors in hs…. we are spending huge amounts of money…. for nothing… it’s political crap…. it doesn’t matter how much money we spend per student per semester…. it’s not going to make the kids any smarter… or change the culture they live in….